


Telephone Line, Give Me Some Time

by perfectpro



Series: Matchmaker [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5142149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles finally relents and gives Lydia a call, because anything is better than Natalie staring flatly at him over the dinner table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telephone Line, Give Me Some Time

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a third chapter to the first work in the series, Firecracker, but I decided to make it into a series so I can add onto it when needed.

Stiles doesn’t touch the newest contact card in his phone, but that’s mostly due to the fact that he’s forgotten about it. The whole episode seems strange when he remembers it, like some kind of dream that couldn’t have actually happened. And it’s not like getting some random girl’s number when he’s never met her before is even the weirdest thing to happen this week – which, wow, he’s never actually thought about how strange his life can be until he thought that sentence. Anyway, he has other stuff to worry about, stuff like finding textbooks for his classes at a price that doesn’t make his bank account cry, and calling Scott to talk about whether his friend made it into the environmental law class he got screwed out of in phase one registration.

So when he comes home from a run, maybe two weeks after the coffee house incident, he’s certainly not expecting to find Natalie Martin standing on the front porch and talking with his father. Stiles has a moment where he considers doing a few more blocks and trying to come back when they’re done, but he’s already breathing hard and the doctor told him to take it easy for the next few months to ward off shin splints. He stops in the driveway, checks his watch to get a feel for his pace, and then waves at his dad and Natalie like this is totally normal.

In the back of his mind, he remembers Natalie saying that he knew his dad, but Stiles had forgotten to rail his father for details, more preoccupied with his kill streak in Call of Duty. Now he wishes he had more details.

“Nice to see you again, Stiles,” Natalie greets him, and that’s when Stiles realizes with a start that her hand is resting in his father’s.

He tries to recover quickly, but it’s fairly obvious that he doesn’t quite make it. “Natalie, uh, Mrs. Martin, wait, no, you’re probably Ms. Martin, good to see you.” He blames it on the fact that he’s still out of breath and hasn’t had a chance to recover yet, but his father’s raised eyebrow and knowing smirk are enough to let him that that he’s not even close to being subtle.

And she’s while clearly not above forcing her daughter’s phone number on him, Natalie doesn’t comment on his babbling, just smiles as says, “Natalie is fine, please. Ms. Martin is too formal for my taste.”

John laughs a little under his breath, squeezes Natalie’s hand and says, “She told me that you guys already met. Which I find hard to believe, because you didn’t come home and start grilling me for answers anytime last week.”

Okay, so Stiles doesn’t exactly keep it private that he’s supportive of his dad getting back out there on the dating scene. “I got distracted by Scott sending me pictures of the dogs at the vet’s office, what can I say?” It hadn’t just been dog pictures, there’d also been a few kittens and one memorable shot of Scott standing next to a horse with a horrified expression, the photo taken while the horse was in mid-sneeze.

“Why your best friend who wants to be a lawyer is spending the summer as a veterinary assistant, I’ll never know,” John says, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “But I wanted to introduce you to Natalie because we’ve been dating for a few weeks and I thought you should meet her.”

“He wants to go into animal law and stop testing on animals, Dad, we’ve been over this,” Stiles answers before realizing the much more important part of what his dad said. “Wait, weeks? Those Friday night overnight shifts…”

“Weren’t exactly spent at the precinct,” Natalie allows, turning to smile at John.

Which, wow, that’s not a mental image that Stiles needed, now or ever, thank you very much. “Okay, well, cool. Next time you can just tell me, although I’m going back next week.

Also, Dad, you couldn’t have waited for a time where I don’t desperately need a shower to have your girlfriend over?” Because that’s the biggest problem that he’s having right now, the fact that he’s sweaty and smelly and clearly not in any shape to shake anyone’s hand.

“You’re going back next week?” Natalie asks, unbothered by his scent. Then again, she’s upwind of him, so it could be that she can’t smell it? Stiles turns his head to smell himself as discreetly as possible, but the scent chokes him and he ends up coughing and looking blankly back at Natalie and John.

“Yeah, my flight out is next Wednesday. A week and a half, so Dad still gets to have me around for a while longer. Classes start the Monday after, but I’m moving in with a buddy of mine and we’re trying to make sure that unpacking doesn’t coincide with homework.” Running a hand through his hair, he shudders slightly at the wet feel.

John picks up from there, elaborating, “They’re moving off campus, so he’s going back a little earlier. Apparently the Yale dorms just weren’t built big enough to fit two male egos in one room.”

“The Yale dorms weren’t big enough for one person, how many times do I have to remind you of when you got trapped by my desk because we brought too much stuff for move in?”

Allowing a small smile, Natalie nods and thinks it over. “Lydia starts the week after, I believe. She’s still living on campus, something about Boston neighborhoods and shoddy plumbing. I’m happy she’s still on campus, I think I’d worry too much about everything going wrong.”

It only takes a moment of thought to remember that Lydia is Natalie’s daughter, and is coincidentally the girl whose phone number he acquired two weeks ago. Goes to MIT, double major in electrical engineering and something he can’t recall, doing an internship over the summer – or was it research? Whatever, not like it’s someone he needs to know all of that stuff about anyway. “This place is pretty good, Dad checked crime rate and everything.”

“Well how else am I going to be able to keep an eye on you if I don’t abuse the badge a little? If Scott didn’t give me weekly updates, I wouldn’t know anything about your life,” John interrupts, scowling even as the hint of a smile shows through.

“Scott gives you weekly updates?” Stiles demands, suddenly wondering what kind of information his best friend has been passing along. Not that he hides things from his dad, but there are some things he tries not to mention.

Laughing, Natalie says, “If Lydia’s best friend gave me updates, my life would be so much easier. She barely tells me anything; evidently, she feels like I’m too pushy with her.”

“I’m sure she tells you things,” Stiles says, and he means it in a very general way. He doesn’t know Lydia, but she and Natalie aren’t exactly on the outs, so there have to be some things that she tells her mother. 

Her eyes tick up to his in an instant, and she demands, “So you spoke to her! That’s something she didn’t tell me.”

There’s a moment where he realizes his mistake and then Stiles rushes to explain, “No, I haven’t spoken to her, but I’m sure that she doesn’t keep things from you. That’s what I’m trying to say.” He’s kind of choking the words up, trying to get them out in a rush to assure her that he hasn’t used the phone number she forced on him.

John’s eyes tick between them, and then he says, “Go get cleaned up, son. Dinner’s in half an hour.” With that, he waves Stiles inside the house and turns back to Natalie, shifting the conversation to something about the school board’s most recent decision regarding budget cuts towards the foreign language department.

-x-

Natalie lets it go that night, but she keeps coming over the house over the next week, and Stiles finds himself being subtly (and not so subtly, some days) reminded that she expects him to give her daughter a call.

Look, he remembers what Lydia looks like from the pictures, and he’s willing to bet that a girl like that has found herself as the object of many unwarranted affections. Stiles is a guy who is nearly twenty years old, he knows better than to think she’d give him even half a chance just because her mother is crazy enough to give him her number. Not that he even wants a chance, because he doesn’t even know this girl.

That’s what he finds himself repeating to Natalie, day after day. “I don’t even know Lydia, I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling her,” he says over dinner on Tuesday, trying to throw his dad a _help me_ glance that probably comes closer to _I have heartburn and what kind of spices are you even using on the squash_.

“You don’t know her because you haven’t called her. And I gave her your number, by the way. God knows that she hasn’t kept it, disregarded it the moment I said it, but if you called her you would know her. I think she’d like you,” Natalie informs him, passing the butter to John before returning to give Stiles an unimpressed glare with the fact that he hasn’t overstepped his boundaries and forced her daughter to hold a conversation with him.

He’s about to offer that most people do, in fact, like him, but that probably wouldn’t help his case, and he gets distracted by the fact that there’s butter on the table. “Um, Dad, despite the popular confusion due to _Mean Girls_ , butter isn’t actually a carb. I thought I instituted a house-wide ban on butter,” because he definitely remembers that being the first thing to go. The next was that olive oil became the main cooking oil in the house, after he’d read up on substituting monosaturated fats for polyunsaturated fats.

John pauses and then sets down the buttered knife after a moment of careful consideration. “I’ve gotten lax in your absence, looks like.” He doesn’t say anything more about it and takes a pointed bite of his unbuttered roll.

“My fault, I believe. John never mentioned a butter ban,” Natalie reprimands, drawing the butter away and back to her and Stiles. “I should probably boycott it, too, God knows how often Lydia has been on my case for being heart-healthy. If she sends me one more box of Cheerios in the mail, I’m going to send them back to her roommate with instructions for them to be poured into her bed.”

Narrowing his eyes, Stiles tries to gauge whether it’s a trick or not. She doesn’t seem to be lying about it, but it could just be a stretch of the truth designed to make him like her daughter more and therefore more likely to call her. Natalie doesn’t harp on it, though, just lets the conversation on, and her forgets about.

-x-

Saturday is when he breaks, because Natalie has stopped dropping hints and started bothering him about it, even going so far as to interrupt his packing process to remind him about it.

The fact that he doesn’t even really have a packing process notwithstanding, he’s done tolerating it. It occurs to tell his dad, but he’d just give Stiles the patented Stilinski _I’m very disappointed in your inability to resolve your own problems_ look that Stiles hasn’t actually ever been able to master. And he’s tried telling Natalie he’s just not going to do it, but she gives him such flat looks that it’s better for everyone if he stops trying.

And, well, if the method that he’s using to get her to back off is also her goal, it’s also his only option. That’s how he finds himself cursing under his breath as he closes the bedroom door and calls the mysterious contact named ‘Lydia Martin’, praying that he won’t have to leave a voicemail.

She picks up after two rings, the kind of suspicious “hello” used when an unknown number pops up. And normally Stiles would be more sympathetic, but it’s been a long day, and he has business to attend to.

“Tell your mother to stop telling me to call you,” he huffs out, balancing the phone on his shoulder while he holds a box shut and tapes it relatively tight. That should be good enough to hold up through the US postal service, so long as it’s not tossed around too much. On second thought, he pulls the tape back and prepares to do it over again.

“I think you have the wrong number,” the person he thought was Lydia says immediately.

She’s not going to get off this easy, oh no, Stiles knows better than to think that Natalie might have accidentally put in a wrong number. “Lydia Martin, right?” he demands, maybe a little rougher than the situations needs.

A moment of quiet and then, calm and curious, “Who is this?”

“Stiles Stilinski. I’m the kid your mom ran into the coffee shop forever ago, and she basically accosted me, only not literally, but the point is that she forced me to take your number. I kind of thought that was going to be it, but she’s dating my dad and she hasn’t let up on it. So, please, I’m really sorry to be this creepy guy to call you up out of nowhere, but please ask her to lay off,” he begs, the words unstoppable as soon as the floodgates are open.

There’s a sound like she’s stifling something that might be a laugh and might be a sigh, and then, “This is Lydia.” She sounds dejected, as though she wishes she wasn’t. “So you’re John’s son. I knew they were dating.”

Which, whatever, not the point. “Yes, they’re dating, they’ve been dating, but can you please tell your mom to get off my back? I don’t want to be one of those guys that just assumes it’d be cool to call you, because it wouldn’t be. I don’t even know you.” She already knows that, but it certainly can’t hurt to add.

“Sounds like your own problem, really,” Lydia huffs. “Haven’t you tried telling her that yourself?”

What does she think he is, an idiot? Bitingly, Stiles snaps, “Of course not, I totally overlooked that completely obvious choice. Instead, I thought I would call the girl I’ve never met before and ask her to handle it because I’m clearly the dumbest person alive.” And that’s probably overkill, but he’s stressed out enough that he doesn’t worry about it. All he wants is for Natalie to get off his case.

“Clearly,” she says drily. And then, hesitantly, “Thank you for not calling otherwise.”

He pauses, unsure of what she means until he thinks about the fact that he definitely knows guys who would have accosted some girl, even if they didn’t know her. “Uh, yeah. Of course.” Because he doesn’t really know what else to say to that, other than that this girl must be more used to that kind of behavior than she’d like to be.

Sighing lightly, Lydia says, “I’ll tell her, though I don’t know how much good it’ll do considering I’ve been telling her. Maybe it’ll stick this time.” She doesn’t sound hopeful.

“Thanks,” he answers, finally getting the tape on properly. Let the United States Postal service try to ruin that.

“Yeah, sure. Bye,” she tells him simply, hanging up without waiting for him to respond.

Stiles rolls his eyes, tosses his phone onto the bed and starts on another box.

Across the country, standing on the balcony of her and Allison’s apartment, Lydia squints at the screen before hovering her thumb over the ‘Save Contact’ notification that’s come up. It’s not like she’ll need to talk to him again, but something feels weird about just ignoring it. She presses down and enters what information she knows before locking her phone, walking into the apartment, and promptly forgetting about it.


End file.
